said. "We made empty buildings and
airports and high-speed trains." (As the
Madrid banker told me, "The cost em-
bedded in taking someone by high-
speed rail to Galicia is so high that it
would be cheaper just to give people in
Galicia a free plane ticket.") Molinas
would have preferred investments in
what is often called human capital, the
very stuff that the crisis was forcing
Spain to stint on. "Now we are cutting
education, research and development,
health care. People making the laws
don t understand."
When the isolation and relative pri-
vation of the Franco years gave way to
decades of unshackled growth and
effortless urbanity, Spaniards were un-
derstandably delighted to be the envy of
the world. In addition to having the best
banking system, they had the best archi-
tecture, the best chefs, the best national
soccer team, the best king. They had Ja-
vier Bardem and Penélope Cruz. The
ensuing comeuppance, in some but cer-
tainly not all of these categories, has led
to a kind of crisis of confidence that is
exacerbated by the possibility that Spain,
the one that includes Barcelona and Bil-
bao, is at risk of falling apart.
By the time I left Molinas, protesters
and gawkers were beginning to
gather on the far side of the barricades
that the police had set up outside the
Palace Hotel. On the near side were half
a dozen police vans and some armored
cops and photographers. Behind them,
the plaza in front of the Congress build-
ing was virtually empty. In back of it was
a drab Franco-era office building, where
I had an appointment to see Rosa Díez,
a Basque native who in Congress repre-
sents the district of Madrid. In 2007,
she left the Socialist Party, which has
ruled alternately with the Popular Party
since the early nineties, and co-founded,
with the philosopher Fernando Savater,
a new party called Union, Progress, and
Democracy, or UPyD. As an upstart
(and a moderating voice on the Basque
conflict), UPyD has generated some
hope along the margins, among young
Spaniards who are fed up with what
they regard as the cozy collusive-by-
default rule of the two major parties.
Díez is the head of her party.
"It s not the economy," she said,
through a translator. She had a stylish,
SKETCHBOOK BY BARRY BLITT